I Am One Who Withdraws When Overstimulated

I Am One Who Withdraws When Overstimulated.

I Am One Who Withdraws When Overstimulated. Sometimes I get frustrated with my highly sensitive introverted self. I've been working on more compassion for the rhythms I require, although I do not always understand them. I am attracted to vivid colors and experiences, but am also one who gets exhausted by too much noise and other stimulation, and needs to just withdraw and recharge. The world is a hot, bright place to me sometimes. It's OK to withdraw to my cool, private world.

I Am the One Who Is Creative

I Am the One Who Paints

I created this card last year, just after my birthday. I use it now for my profile picture on facebook. 

It represents a favorite part of myself, the creative, the painter.  Somewhere I read, when I was working

on my BFA, that in ancient Japan it was considered the artist's duty to bring the beauty of nature to

those who had to keep their eyes on the world of commerce and politics, who did not have time to

glimpse it in their day to day life.  I took this to heart. In this card are: Victorian flower images, garden

flowers, forget-me-nots, cans of paint and a painter's brush, Tibetan tanka imagery and colorful South

American painted pottery. These different images represent the idea of memory, the beauty of nature,

(especially flowers), tradition, the joy of color, my spirituality. All these aspects ignite my love for painting

and my sense of responsibility for bringing my ideas/visions/dreams to birth through my art.

I Am the One Who Loves Color

I Am the One Who Loves Nature

I Am the One Who Brings Beauty to Others

I Am the One Who Seeks the Path With Heart

I Am the One Who Trusts Intuition

I Am the One Guided by Spirit

I Am the One Inspired By Elizabeth St. Hillary Nelson

SoulCollage: I Am the One Inspired by Elizabeth St. Hillary Nelson
Collage using Gelli Plate, acrylic paint and deli paper plus images from
Elizabeth's promotional flier and images from her collages

I attended a Paper Painting Collage workshop with Elizabeth the first weekend of September, 2014.

It was so inspiring! As one gets older, I'm told, new experiences become connected to related experiences

from the past.  So this experience took me back to: being in painting school, working with children in

summer recreation programs, a workshop with child book illustrator Ed Young, seeing the paper

cuts of Matisse, as well as reading the wonderful books from Eric Carle when my son was young. 

So great to connect to all those experiences of with a common theme: being playfully creative while

delighting in the pure sensual and intuitive pleasure of making colorful marks. Additionally we traded

bits of paper that workshop participants had painted and worked to assemble our individual collages.

Here is my first collage from that workshop.

First Apple

collage with painted paper

I Am the One Who is Inspired by Elizabeth St. Hillary Nelson

I Am the One Who is a Whimsical Collage Artist

I Am the One Who Remembers Being a Creative Child

I Am the One Who is in Love with Color

I Am  the One Who is a Painter

I Am the One Who  Puts the Torn Pieces Back Together to Make a Better Picture

I Am The One Who Cures the Common Cold

I Am The One Who Cures the Common Cold

This card is about knowing the recipe for finding healing.  This card came together over the period of a

few weeks as I gradually found the various elements brought together here.  The doctor with the very

silly hat was one of the final pieces, and when I found her large, red, clown's nose the card was complete.

So here is the recipe, and no great revelations, but in the time of cold and flu season, when this card was

made, it was a good reminder.

1. Good humor and general silliness is the best medicine; also seeing the doctor when needed
2. Exercise (swimmer diving in).  Remembering that exercise supports the immune system
3. Healthy and warming foods like chicken soup
4. Balance (yin/yang symbol) which, to me, means a balance between worldly activity and
   contemplative practice
5. Rest (the guy resting on the couch); also taking time to get better

My favorite part of the card remains the smiling doctor who seems so full of positive regard for anyone

who happens to view this card.  I think I should add that allowing others to love and care for you is an

important factor for health, as well as locating that loving part of ourselves that reminds us to lighten up,

and take time to shine loving compassion on ourselves and our bodies as well as all being around us in the world.

Soul Collage: This Woman's Issues

Mind Map of I Am the One Who Defines Myself Despite Convention

I Am the One Who Defines Myself Despite Convention

This card initially surprised me.  I thought I was going to make a card to celebrate the solstice during the 

SoulCollage group on December 21st but this composition emerged from my unconscious/conscious

instead.  It started with a poetry magazine image which was a collage comprised of fragments of images of

women from glamour magazines.  The poem was about feeling fragmented.  I then found the ancient stone

steps/wall which I cut apart and rearranged, as I did with the glamour images.  Somehow the dark

silhouette of a mosque seemed to fit into the foreground of this card.  

I just noticed that the religious building is in the foreground, the ancient bricks of a wall or steps are in the
mid ground, and the images of the women are in the background.  This arrangement is a metaphor all in itself.
I must acknowledge that I arranged things in this order--and so I see how my mind places what is closest,
a step away, and farther away.  Is this my unconscious understanding of what is important?
Perhaps it is the order of what has been important in shaping my ideas of how I am valued as a woman.
And how I value myself.

At first I reported to the group that this card was another one of a series of "enigma" cards for me.  Images
seem to belong together but my conscious self has no idea what it "means".  I just created a mind-map to try
to unlock my associations.  I really recommend using this form of free writing to gather your associations.

I am now remembering what I told the women at that meeting: that the Solstice represents the return of hope

and light.  With the light we drive away the darkness and are also able to illuminate what is in the shadow.

In the shadow/unseen/unknown for me has been the unconscious judgments I hold related to my value as

a woman as I grow older.  I have reached that age where I perceive that men no longer see me or seek me...

I am invisible to them.  Or so it seems.  But what part of me is defining my own worth as the degree to

which I am beautiful/attractive/sexy or sought after as a sexual partner?

I do not want to become asexual.  I want to be recognized as an attractive woman despite my wrinkles and
rounder figure.  But I long ago rejected many of the accouterments of the beautiful women I see around me:
high heels, fashionable clothes, makeup, styled hair and  jewelry. Actually I think those things were thrown
out with my bra during my hippie years and the woman's liberation movement.  But apparently my association
between my value as a woman and person and my own physical attractiveness was not let go of.

I also continue to see images of glamour and sexual beauty in most ads and many news videos, including the
highly styled women who are delivering the news.  In addition is the news from other countries, as well as
conservative thinkers in our own country, who believe that the freedom gained for women in the last century in
the US is wrong. Women are still stoned or imprisoned in other countries for disagreeing with the religious
and/or political ideas that have been in place for centuries.  I have been grateful to be in this country and
feel, in general, as if I have the right to express myself as a human being, without regard to gender.

But this card is telling me that I need to shift MY idea of my value. That I need to stop comparing myself to
the supermodel or sexy female rocker of the moment.  That I need to lay to rest my need to be validated by
others, especially men, in terms of my outer beauty.

Just saw this wonderful quote from the 17th Karmapa

"Do not let anyone tell you how you must look or act just because you are a man or a woman.
You have boundless potential that can only be limited when you believe that your social identity
is really who you are. Who you are is not a perfectly measured object. There is tremendous elasticity
in who you can be. It is up to you to decide the shape you give yourself."
~ 17th Karmapa

I Am the One Who Defines Myself Despite Convention
I Am the One Who Defines Myself Without Reference to Social/Political/Religious Expectations
I Am the One Who Accepts and Nurtures My Aging Body
I Am the One Who Loves Myself and has Compassion for Myself
I Am the One Who is Worthy of Love
I Am the One Who Continues to Be of Value to the World
I Am the One Who Continues to Grow
I Am the One Who Becomes More Full of Light. 

SoulCollage: I Am the One Who Climbs Out of the Wreckage

I Am the One Who Climbs Out of the Wreckage

I made this card at the end of August before the flooding that has impacted some of my favorite 

Colorado towns, specifically Boulder, Lyons, Estes Park.  Many others also impacted.  It is not over

yet as it is still raining hard today.  I am not near a river, lake, creek or dam so I have been spared

except for a leaky roof and closed highways.

This card is not just about the Colorado flood of 2013.  It is about the strength it takes to climb, at

least psychologically and spiritually, out of life's pressing challenges.  What does it take to climb

out of the wreckage?  The right knowledge, equipment, supplies, and tools.  Good fortune created

through mindfulness, meditation, and right practice.  Grace.  In life it is likely that one will lose one's 

physical home and all that is familiar through events that cause suffering: a natural disaster, illness,

loss of a job, loved ones, personal injury, or warfare; and still attain the peace that endures.

In this card the woman, who coincidentally has the same face as the Quan Yin figure, is able to

make it to safety through her climb towards this shrine at the cliff top.  Beautiful, blue mandala-like

flowers bloom despite the shake-up below. Having strength, through  spiritual practice and the

determination to make gradual progress, allows me to reach the goal.  Strangely the goal is also

the path and the practice.  I am so grateful, I am so blessed.

Just saw this quote from post by  Domo Geshe Rinpoche and it feels connected to this card:

Among the Vows of the Medicine Buddha upon attaining Enlightenment, 
according to the Medicine Buddha Sutra are:
To illuminate countless realms with his radiance, enabling anyone to become a Buddha just like him.
To awaken the minds of sentient beings through his light of lapis lazuli.
To help beings follow the Moral Precepts, even if they failed before.
To heal beings born with deformities, illness or other physical sufferings.
To help relieve the destitute and the sick.
To help heal mental afflictions and delusions.
To help the oppressed be free from suffering.

I Am The One Who Hears the Call

magazine clips, scissors, glue-stick, 5" X 8" support

The Soul Collage  process has been calling me, and I'm heeding the call.  I've been making a card

or so a day and I can hardly tell you how powerful this process is.  In the past I've made a card

here or there for years but have recently picked up the thread because I've had a coaching client

who has been bringing her cards to our phone sessions.

I returned to Anne Marie Bennett's website and looked around.  I pulled out Seena Frost's book

about Soul Collage and enrolled in a teleclass called "Journaling With Our Cards".  The class 

just ended, although I'm staying active on the related facebook page.  I started the journal

and have committed to creating and journaling with my cards as often as I can.  

Another thing that I've returned to is this Healing Art Works blog.  I started blogging with this

site, with a  focus on art therapy and "Healing Art Works", which had been embodied in my

artist cards a few years ago.  For the last year I've been blogging on another blog, Creative Collage

4 Visual Journaling, focusing on my visual art journal pages and my group in Colorado. 

Now my art and soul explorations will include my Soul Collage cards and process.

Soul Collage is a registered trademark but anyone can click on the link in this blog for free

instruction on how to make cards.  I think I am so hooked because of the deep feelings that have

come up for me in the recent class and to experience again what a dynamic process it is to engage

with the parts of self.  I've experienced this process before with other techniques: Sand Play

Therapy, Alchemical Hypnotherapy, Dream Work, Art Therapy, art making (especially as a 

collagist), and as a Tarot reader.

Somehow Soul Collage is just the perfect inspiration and healing modality for me now,

although I will continue to delight in many of the above processes as well.

Using ATC in the classroom

Started teach the Human Relations class last night. Have ten art therapy graduate students who are learning the basics, this term, of therapeutic relationships. Had them start art therapy cards using collage.  They were asked to create two. One that describes each of them today, one that presents who they want to be after they complete their graduate degree and begin their career as art therapists. They will write a journal/reflection page for each of the cards and give me a color copy of their two journal pages with the associated card.  We will practice basic relationship building behaviors as we process the cards in the next class.
We are building a safe container/homeroom place in this course/classroom. I drew a picture of a container, a caldron, on the board with the word "welcome" on it. I asked them what this represents. They said: "a container". I talked to them about this class being a place they can be contained within. I drew a flame below the pot and talked about how the process of becoming a therapist will "cook" them until they are done.  I told them a joke: "We put you in the pot and then add all the necessary ingredients, then you will be cooked and turn out delicious".  Talking about the transformation process from artist to art therapist.  All the ingredients are the experiences and skills that will be added to and drawn from them in the next year.